Madame, I have always forgotten to ask you why they continue to serve the young ladies with rye bread in days when wheat is no longer dear. It was very proper that they should learn by their own experience the inequality of the riches of the world, and take some share in the public sufferings; but they ought to be put back into the usual system when there is no reason to keep them out of it. The tendency of communities is to retrench on food, rather than on commodities or embellishments which they ought to go without. As our nourishment is simple and frugal, nothing should touch it. The girls are murmuring in their hearts much more bitterly than they dare say. I try in everything to help you with my experience. Do not think, either for yourself or for your girls, that those who do not feel dull have no need of relaxation. Serious occupations wear upon us, little by little, without our perceiving it until too late; that is why, my dear daughter, you ought to prevent such a result by diversions of the mind that are innocent. Take care only that nothing passes contrary to religious modesty, nothing worldly, nothing excited or excessive; but that gentleness, holy liberty, simplicity, charity, modesty reign in everything. I wish no dancing. _To Mme. de Radouay._ October 15, 1696. Profit, I conjure you, for yourself and for others by the experience you have just had of quinine. Nothing is more unreasonable than notions; our age assumes them about everything; they decide all things; there is no one who does not seek to be a doctor, or meddle in the direction of affairs; all have decided opinions; women pretend to judge of books, sermons, governments, of the spiritual and the bodily; modesty is no longer in usage. No one ever replies now, "I do not know," or "It is not for me to judge;" no one is baffled; the place of knowledge and judgment is filled by intolerable presumption, for never were persons more ignorant. Do not have, or allow that quality in your midst. Say out, simply, that you do not know. Let yourselves be guided by confessors, doctors, superiors, magistrates, the king; inspire that modesty in your novices, to whom this letter is as necessary as to you. I am delighted that the Reds desire to please me; what pleasure if at my next visit you can tell me they have all been good. They will obtain that happiness if they ask it of God and serve Him with their whole heart. _To Mme. de Fontaines_ [now the Superior]. December, 1696.